A review by dukegregory
The Healing by Gayl Jones

5.0

Sorry but the fact that Gayl Jones is not a household name is criminal and this novel cements that completely for me, it cements that she is now in the pantheon of my favorite authors, it cements that she is one of most formalistically and thematically complex writers I have ever encountered and yet she makes it all seem like there is an ease to her craft, breezy, an ease to the curation that I find appalling in its magic, she makes it all seem like literary witchcraft in its construction, whether it be the innovative nonlinear form by which you are constantly disoriented yet grounded, the dialect taking on the tone of an oral storyteller paired with the circularity of the stream of consciousness, the breadth of topics discussed: anthropology, literary history, art criticism, science, colorism, tourism, refugee status, family, class, womanhood, and, of course, blackness, blackness as social construct, blackness as culture, and she does it all and never falters and never has a moment where you think, that wasn't very well done, or, oh that seems a bit sloppy, because it never is, it's never sloppy, no digression is bland, no discussion of a past lover is ridiculous, no discussion of the narrators travels in Africa become fetishistic but instead insightful not as a testament to the multiplicity of Africa's culture, which is discussed, but the interplay between being a black American and meeting Africans who find no real reason for the "African" in "African-American" to exist, and then you get into the whole plot with her role as a D-list rock musician's manager and then an affair and then a black German horse breeder and then working at a beauty parlor and then and then you forget that she's a faith healer because really that's all just kind of a frame narrative, it's really all just symbolic or representational and it all comes full circle while leaving out a detail in those final lines that was gutting in how much I wanted the answer but it feels right not knowing.

Gayl Jones must be read!